Cornell University Team Wins $50K In AI Puzzle-Solving Challenge Contest

Study in US: The Cornell team has developed a set of AI models to solve around 56% of problems. The team submitted their paper to the 2024 ARC Prize competition and received a first-place paper award.

Cornell University team participated in the 2024 ARC Prize competition by submitting is set of AI models with the name - “Combining Induction and Transduction for Abstract Reasoning,”. The team led by Kevin Ellis, assistant professor of computer science at the Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science has received the $50,000 prize.

The prize amount will be shared by the lead authors Keya Hu, a visiting undergraduate student in Ellis’ group and Wen-Ding Li, a doctoral student in the field of computer science.

“It felt like a milestone for me, because this ARC competition really withstood five years with so many other good AI models being proposed,” Li said.

Cornell University's AI Model Details

ARC-AGI set comprises multiple problems in the form of coloured grids. Each puzzle has two or more examples before and after the puzzle to show the solution. The person trying to solve the puzzle must detect the pattern and apply it to the last "before" grid.

Ellis lab members started training two neural networks. The two approaches used in the AI system are similar to the two ways that humans are believed to form thoughts. One "slow" thinking involving logic and deliberation and another is fast thinking based on intuition.

“They have different, unique advantages, so when we combine these two approaches together, it further boosts our performance. We get 56.75% accuracy, and it’s very, very close to the average human performance of 60%," Hu said.

"The research team included Cornell undergraduates Carter Larsen ’25 and Yuqing Wu ’26 (both Bowers Undergraduate Research Experience summer students), Caleb Woo ’26 and Spencer Dunn ’24, as well as Simon Alford and Hao Tang, both doctoral students in computer science," says the Cornell statement.

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The White House has recognized six Cornell faculty members with 2025 Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE). The faculty members are - Zhiting Tian, Tashara M. Leak, and Andrew Hein from the Ithaca campus, and Kristen Pleil, Ekta Khurana, and Steven Josefowicz from Weill Cornell Medicine.

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